The Season of Lent

The Season of Lent has begun. During the second reading at Ash Wednesday mass, we hear the powerful words: "We are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us." It's one of my favorite bible quotes. Lent is a very special time in the life of the Church and in the life of each Catholic. The fact that so many millions of people feel a need to present themselves for ashes, I think, is a sign of the hunger that people have for God. We must not allow our Lenten experience to be simply the ashes. That must be simply a recognition of our mortality and our dependence upon God. Our design is to be an Ambassador for Christ and our destiny to live with God forever and our life of the resurrection must begin now in our lives with discipleship, in the way we follow Christ into the desert for 40 days.

At St Mary of the Visitation Parish we will be focusing upon Lent within the context of a theme - Spring Training. During each of the weeks of Lent we will be getting ready for our Season Opener - Easter - by reviewing some "drills" - Fasting, Prayer, Penance and Almsgiving.

The busyness of life is such that I think we would all agree that Time is one of the greatest treasures which we have. This weekend we started our Spring Training by looking at Fasting - but Fasting Time. Taking time we would give to ourselves and instead dedicating it to God. One such way may be thru praying the Stations of the Cross on Friday evening, or maybe dedicating a little more time daily to prayer - a devotion such as the Rosary - or maybe just quiet time listening for the voice of the Lord.

I recently game across this excellent resource which might be of help - just some thoughts to help you with your Fasting. - www.ewtn.com/faith/lent

During Lent we will also have a Parish Mission with Bishop Peter Hundt from March 22-25. See our website for details.

I will be taking a little break from the Blog during Lent, part of my fasting, see you in 40 days.

Pilgrimage in the Holy Land

During our recent Parish Pilgrimage to the Holy Land I must tell you that I was totally blessed by the experience
- the 30 individuals who went were a delight to travel with
- the guides we had were learned & led us in laughter but in also seeing Christ’s Light
- the sites we saw were humbly to say the least - the site of His birth, the very spot of his Crucifixion , the location of the tomb (which is empty by the way), the Church of the Visitation, where we left the prayer intentions of parishioners, which were remembered in prayer each day during our walk of faith.

Yet as humbled as I was by all those sites, the sight which humbled me the most was the one of a simple Bethlehem Orphanage

From its exterior it looked like a Palace and yet inside were such simple children and care givers; one of those children was days old and abandoned on the door step

In one room in various cribs were about two dozen children and one child - a little boy - lay in his crib crying. I went over and simply touched his back and each time I walked away he cried some more, and yet with a simple touch he stopped crying.

One of the Sisters working there said “ Father would you mind just staying there, there are too many for me to touch right now, if you could just touch him.” Yes I replied, then adding, "its too bad there are too many". Her reply was humbling

“We do not choose to say there are too many, but rather its good for they here for it means they are alive.”

A simple touch and a simple choice - Christ was speaking from the very City he was born in - choose a simple touch.

Life is full of choices....when things are good and when things are bad...and as we live High Definition Lives with Clarity, Colour and the Context of Christ ....we also have choices.

A leper came to Jesus begging him, and kneeling he said to him, "If you choose, you can make me clean." Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, "I do choose. Be made clean!

If our lives are to represent Christ - we need to see and understand how did Jesus makes choices in His life ? How can we learn from that ?

We see in scripture over and over again that Christ made His choices based on the same principle each time Jesus' Choice was about the Least, the Last, the Little, the Lost. Over and over again Christ chose to reach out to those:

★ Who were the Least among,
★ Who were Last to be served,
★ Who were Little and not seen,
★ Who were Lost and needed to be found

Over and Over again we see Christ choose to be with them and to live out the call which all of us are invited to accept, and which is so key to High Definition Living, the call to service, the call to reach out of our selves and to reach out to others


We see that expressed in an ancient adage:

GOD IS THE SOURCE OF LOVE
CHRIST IS THE PROOF OF LOVE
SERVICE IS THE EXPRESSION OF LOVE

I am so grateful for our Pilgrimage to the Holy Land and so humbled to be chosen thru Baptism and to have been touched by Christ in His Holy Land.